contact between the penis and the vulva or the penis and the anus involving penetration, however slight; contact between the mouth and penis, vulva, or anus; or penetration of the anal or genital opening of another person by a hand, finger, or other object.

The high numbers for male victims of being made to penetrate clearly weren’t a fluke for the 2010 period as some have suggested when dismissing the finding that 1.1% of men have been made to penetrate someone else during 2010. What we have is a sharp (~50%) increase up to 1.7% of men having been made to penetrate someone else during 2011.

Comparisons Of The Findings For Perpetrators Of Rape And Being Made To Penetrate (Lifetime)

Victims

Victimization

Female perpetrator

Male perpetrator

NISVS 2010

NISVS 2011

Δ

NISVS 2010

NISVS 2011

Δ

Men

Rape

6.7%

20.7%

14.0

93.3%

79.3%

-14.0

Women

Rape

1.9%

1.0%

-0.9

98.1%

99.0%

0.9

Men

Being made to penetrate

79.2%

82.6%

3.4

20.8%

17.4%

-3.4

Women

Being made to penetrate

–

–

–

–

–

–

Numbers in black are those given by the NISVS reports while I have calculated those in red (assuming that non-male perpetrators are female and that non-female perpetrators are male).

Here we see a pretty large increase in the ratio of female perpetrators against men and a smaller increase in the ratio of male perpetrators against women.

Impact On Prevention Efforts

So, we have an increase in number of male victims and an increase in male victims who report a female perpetrators. I wonder what the latest report says about prevention efforts:

Prevention efforts should take into consideration that female sexual violence and stalking victimization is predominately perpetrated by men and that a substantial proportion of male sexual violence and stalking victimization (rape, unwanted sexual contact, noncontact unwanted sexual experiences, and stalking) also is perpetrated by men.

No mention at all about any prevention efforts towards female perpetrators.

The “made to penetrate” and “sexual coercion” categories which both have predominately (>80%) female perpetrators reported by male victims are conveniently left out from the considerations that prevention efforts should take.

I am getting the distinct impression that CDC clearly doesn’t give a shit about male victims of female perpetrators.

Questioning Last 12 Months Numbers – Telescoping

This time the CDC addresses the last 12 months numbers in a general way. They state:

Fourth, self-reported data are vulnerable to recall bias because respondents might believe that events occurred closer in time than they did in actuality (i.e., telescoping), and this type of bias might particularly affect 12-month prevalence estimates.

This sounds like an attempt at downplaying the high victimization rates in the last 12 months – in particular for male victims. CDC did not have any problems with referring to the “last 12 months” numbers for female rape victimization in their fact-sheet.

CDC, however, are also imprecise in their use of the term telescoping, even though they really should know better. The term telescoping not only includes forward telescoping (which is what CDC describes above), but it also include backward telescoping which is when people think an event occurred further back in time than it did in actuality. Events older than three years tend to be backward telescoped while events more recent than three years tend to be forward telescoped. Women are less likely to telescope (backward and forward) for some subject matters while men are less likely for other subject matters. I haven’t been able to find any research into gender differences into telescoping (forward or backward) on the subject matter of sexual abuse victimization.

CDC have done some right things in order to minimize the telescoping effect: Using a clearly delimited time period (last 12 months) in the question as well as asking specific questions are point mentioned as methods to minimize telescoping.

According to ‘reverse record checks’ (surveys of people known in official records to have been victimized), surveys underestimate the actual experience of physical force. While there is some exaggeration of victimization in the past year because respondents ‘forward telescope’ their answers (e.g., recall events that occurred more than a year ago as having occurred within the past year), there is more non-recall or ‘failure to reveal’ than forward telescoping. [….] In summary, the combination of non-recall and backwards telescoping of assault is more common than forward telescoping.

Neither non-recall, ‘failure to reveal’ nor backward telescoping and how any of them may affect the NISVS findings is mentioned by the CDC.

Impact Of Violence

The NISVS 2011 Summary Report states:

Consistent with previous studies, the overall pattern of results suggest that women, in particular, are heavily impacted over their lifetime. However, the results indicate that many men also experience sexual violence, stalking and, in particular, physical violence by an intimate partner. Although there are relatively smaller differences in the overall prevalence of physical violence by an intimate partner when comparing women and men, there is greater differentiation between women and men in terms of the prevalence of negative intimate partner violence–related impact. This suggests the need to look beyond the overall prevalence estimates when comparing the total burden of men’s and women’s intimate partner violence victimization.

One contributing factor for the difference in impact of sexual violence between men and women is the fact that one or two of the thirteen categories of impact of violence were only asked of women.

The survey asked only women if the sexual violence resulted in a pregnancy. As we have seen in a recent case there certainly is a potential for a negative impact for the male victim if a child is conceived as a result of them “being made to penetrate”.

According to figure 2 in the NISVS 2011 Summary Report the question whether the victim contracted any sexually transmitted infections were only asked of women during the 2011 survey. The document containing the questions for the 2011 survey does not include that set of questions, but the questionnaire for the 2010 survey does and in that questionnaire it seems that both female and male respondents are asked the question about STDs. Figure 2 may have a typographical error or CDC may have changed the questionnaire even though there is no mention of this change. I lean towards the former as one would expect them to realize that men are not immune from STDs. Then again, forced vaginal intercourse isn’t always rape according to them.

The Fact-Sheet

The fact-sheet does not mention male victims of being made to penetrate at all, neither does it mention that male victims are predominately victimized by female perpetrators.

Under the heading “Women are disproportionately affected by IPV, SV, and stalking” the following findings are listed:

Nearly 1 in 5 women (19.3%) and 1 in 59 men (1.7%) have been raped in their lifetime.

Approximately 1.9 million women were raped during the year preceding the survey.

One in 4 women (22.3%) have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner, while 1 in 7 men (14.0%) have experienced the same.

One in 6 women (15.2%) have been stalked during their lifetime, compared

to 1 in 19 men (5.7%).

Their concern for the “last 12 months” numbers didn’t prevent them from using the “last 12 months prevalency number for female rape victimization.

The “being made to penetrate” victimization is nowhere to be seen on the fact-sheet, but if victims of “being made to penetrate” were included we would have bullet points saying:

1 in 15 men have been made to penetrate a perpetrator, while 1 in 160 women have been made to penetrate a perpetrator

Approximately 1.9 million men were made to penetrate during the year preceding the survey.

If CDC had categorized “being made to penetrate” as rape or as sub-category of rape we would’ve seen the following bullet points:

Nearly 1 in 5 women (19.3%) and 1 in 15 men (6.7%) have been raped in their lifetime (lowest estimate) or

1 in 5 women (19.9%) and a bit more than 1 in 12 men (8.4%) have been raped in their lifetime (highest estimate)

Just as many men as women were raped during the year preceding the survey – approximately 3.8 million victims

Media Impact

Again we can see that CDC categorizing “being made to penetrate” as not-rape and how it’s excluded from the fact-sheet as well as from any statements on impact on prevention efforts is yet again setting up the stage for male victimization to be overlooked and ignored.

Here are articles on NISVS 2011 in mainstream media which I found searching Google News at the time of writing this post:

Washington Post: Male victims of being made to penetrate is completely overlooked. They even erased the category itself when explaining what sexual violence other than rape is:

Jezebel: Male victims of being made to penetrate is completely overlooked.

Salon: Male victims of being made to penetrate is completely overlooked. They even erased the category itself when listing the other forms of sexual violence CDC looked at:

The CDC estimates looked not only at “completed forced penetration,” but also at other forms of sexual violence including attempted rape, unwanted sexual contact, non-contact unwanted sexual experiences (such as being flashed or forced to view explicit images) and sexual coercion.

New York Magazine: Does mention “made to penetrate” although they don’t cite the prevalency number (6.7%/1.7%) for that. They do refer that men “being made to penetrate” reported predominately female perpetrators although they don’t cite the percentage (82.6%).

USNews: Although the article is firmly focused on female victims they included the chart showing male victimization for all categories as well as the chart showing female victimization.

VOX: The article make no mention of male victims at all. They do however report in their chart that 0.6% of women report having been made to penetrate someone else.

Cosmopolitan UK: Mention male victims of rape and how many men have been victims of some other form of sexual violence including unwanted sexual contact.

The Wire: Mention male victims of rape and how many men have been victims of some other form of sexual violence apart

Most articles focus on female victimization and only mention male victimization as far as CDC has mentioned it on the fact-sheet. I couldn’t find any articles questioning CDC categorizing “being made to penetrate” as not rape.

Minor Changes In Methodology Between The NISVS 2010 And NISVS 2011

I’ll just wrap this post up with a minor point about some minor changes in the latest survey’s methodology. CDC stated that some questions that combined several acts were split into two. For instance the question asking whether the victim were made to put their mouth on another person’s (if male: penis, if female: vagina) or anus were split into one question asking whether the victim were made to put their mouth on another person’s (if male: penis, if female: vagina) and a separate questions asking whether the victim were made to put their mouth on another person’s anus.

Based on what I’ve read more explicit question increases accuracy and reduce telescoping.

While the questionnaire for 2011 can be found in this PDF document titled: “National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)
2011 Victimization Questions” can be downloaded from this page on the CDC website.

Appreciate you keeping an eye on the CDC. The CDC’s actions seem far too calculated to be anything but an intentional attempt to erase evidence of male victims of female perpetrators.
Page 24 of the 2010 full report states:
“The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion (83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (53.1%)”http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf

1,267,000 male victims of “made to penetrate” per year, so that comes to 1,003,464 male victims of “made to penetrate” per year by “only female perpetrators.” The number of female perpetrators maybe higher since this figure seemingly excludes men who reported both male and female perpetrators.

You would think over 1,000,000 men per year “made to penetrate” by female perpetrators would be worth at least a mention in any of the CDC summaries/bullet points. Instead, the CDC uses sneaky language to dance around high female perpetration numbers. The 2010 CDC NISVS Executive Summary page 3:
“Male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators. Nearly half of stalking victimizations against males were also perpetrated by males. Perpetrators of other forms of violence against males were mostly female.”http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_executive_summary-a.pdf

The CDC doesn’t count “made to penetrate” as rape, but “made to penetrate” is not “non-contact,” so it is one of the “other forms of violence.” Of course, if the genders were switched, the CDC NISVS would call these “other forms of violence” rape!

I have previously written about the 2007 national survey from the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development here.
This new survey which looks at a certain population in a smaller geographical area than the 2007 had basically the same findings as the 2007 survey: Boys and girls are equally at risk for sexual abuse. Unfortunately your link didn’t include a link nor a title of the paper it refers to, but perhaps I’ll be able to locate the paper by the name of the authors and the journal it was published in.

In my post I wonder whether there could be a print error in figure 2 where it is stated that only women who were raped by their intimate partner were asked if they contracted a sexually transmitted infection from their victimization.

When looking a bit closer at the footnotes on that figures one find this under the explanation what “Any reported IPV-related impact†” is (my emphasis):

† Includes experiencing any of the following: being fearful, concerned for safety, any PTSD symptoms, injury, need for medical care, need for housing services, need
for victim advocate services, need for legal services, missed at least 1 day of work or school, and contacting a crisis hotline. For those who reported being raped,
it also includes having contracted a sexually transmitted infection or having become pregnant. […]

I am significantly less certain that my initial reaction that there is a printing error in that figure is correct. It really does appear that only women who were raped were asked about contracting any STDs when the NISVS were measuring impact of victimization!

” NISVS is a national random-digit–dial telephone survey of the **noninstitutionalized** English- and Spanish-speaking U.S. population aged ≥18 years”

Consequently, it doesn’t include those raped in prison. Due the extreme percentage gender difference in the prison population that implies that both the lifetime and the 12 month rate of male made to penetrate victimization of the NISVS are underestimates.

Leave a Reply (first comment by first time commenters are auto-moderated - this might change when I get the hang of this and if the spam issue doesn't overwhelm me) Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required)(Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )